


Wolf Mother

by cortue



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: 2x21 -Zero Day, Canon levels of violence, Gen, References to Alcohol Abuse, Sex/Gender AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 19:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cortue/pseuds/cortue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five ways the Machine saved Joan’s life, and how she tried to return the favor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolf Mother

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to figmentof for reading this over for me so quickly so I could give it at least a day on the internet before the finale.

[1, 11]

Joan drinks for oblivion, for that moment upon waking when she can’t remember who she is, what she’s done, any of it. It’s hardly a surprise then, that she believes her first meeting with Finch was by that bench looking across the Brooklyn bridge and forgets everything that came before.

“I’m not interested in sharing,” she says, when her awareness of someone standing over her slumped body doesn't go away. “Get lost.”

“I have no intent on taking your,” the overly educated voice pauses, primly, “current accommodations from you. I merely have something I wanted to give you.” He sounds about as uptight as Sister Claire had, all those years ago. Probably some kind of man on a mission to save souls.

“If it’s the hand of God, Priest, you can keep it,” she says, and then laughs. “I can take care of myself just fine.” She keeps her eyes closed because she doesn’t want to see him, see how she’d do it.

It’s too late, of course, she already knows. [She could hear him walk into the alley with a distinct limp, one side weaker than the other. He’d expect her to attack there so she’d feint for it, switch the blow to his other side at the last minute. Even at her best, men look at a tall woman with broad shoulders and have difficulty translating it into pure physical force. This man wouldn’t even see her coming until he was doubled over, her elbow slamming into his kidneys, her hands free and read to break his -- no, stop] Stop. 

She doesn’t want to kill anyone. She wants to forget she ever knew how. She wants to go back to before. She wants to be born new again. She curls up tighter on the ground and wishes she had some damn whiskey.

“It’s food, actually,” the man says, “I--”

“Don’t need it,” she says, “take it. You can come back if you distill it to something I can actually use, though.”

“I hardly think--”

“Priest,” she says, letting the killer out in her voice a little because she can’t quite bring herself to pickpocket anyone who’s actively being kind to her and so she’s got no use for him and less patience,” you want to go away now. Trust me. I’m not armed but I’m,” she laughs, “ _extremely_ dangerous.” She laughs, because he probably won’t believe her but it’s the only thing she has left that’s true. No matter what she does or where she goes, she’s never really left any of it behind. Back in her home country might as well be a thousand miles behind enemy lines.

“I’m not a -- nevermind. I will go, if that is what you want.” The man drops his bag of food and walks away. She can hear him talking to himself as he leaves the alley. “I hardly see how I’m supposed to help her, unless you’d like me to drag her to a halfway house.” There’s no answer, but he keeps talking getting farther away. “More bugs, I expect.”

Joan eventually sits up enough to look into the bag and finds that a complete stranger has just left her a $60 lunch, or whatever the word is when you only eat solid food about once per period of consciousness. The god business apparently pays very well, these days.

She rolls back over. She’s not hungry. She thinks if she can find Ernesto later she can trade him the sandwich for some vodka. Eating only delays the inevitable and she already feels like she’s been waiting such a very, very long time.

-

The Machine sends Harold Finch Joan Reese’s number at odd intervals over the next few months and Harold can only surmise that somehow it’s an error gotten tangled up in one of her core programs. He tries not to think about it. He checks up on Ms. Reese and finds she is always doing exactly what he expected: sleeping, drinking, wandering. She wouldn’t accept his help if he offered it. He recognizes self flagellation when he sees it.

When Joan fights herself into a night spent in the holding cell of the 8th precinct, she knows that the fingerprint analysis is going to be it, the final mistake she’ll ever make, death come for her at last. She could stop the detective, but she doesn’t. She’s ready.

What she doesn’t know is that the Machine sets off every electronic in a three block radius around Harold until he finally, finally listens and watches the security footage from the subway car. Finally, he understands.

This time, when Harold meets Joan, she is sober enough from lock up they can have a proper conversation, the kind that will lodge in her long term memory. This time, from Harold’s perspective, he doesn’t offer her help; he offers her a job.

To Joan, though, it’s both, and for whatever reason, from whatever part of her that just keeps going and going and will not die, she accepts.

[101 - 1000]

It takes several attempts for the Machine to successfully reach Joan, herself. Joan tends to carry her phone in her jacket pocket, so it’s difficult for her to notice it buzzing when she’s distracted in a fight. It’s also more likely for it to get hit against something and break, as Finch points out, holding up the remains of yet another cell.

“What’s the matter, Harold?” she asks, body still rushing with reckless adrenaline. She hadn’t seen that fifth guy coming. He’d almost managed to take her by surprise with a 2’ x 4’. “Money getting tight? I can always put it on my card, if you’d like.”

Harold sighs minutely, and clearly holds himself back from saying anything about how she’d just offered to lend him his own money. She recognizes his behavior. He thinks she’s doing this just to get a rise out of him and if he says nothing, she’ll stop. She wonders how long it’ll take to figure out his nonreactions are just as entertaining.

-

She does start keeping it in her pants pocket after that, but that doesn’t stop it getting smashed when she’s trying to protect Charlie Burton from the Russian mafia. She thinks she sees a message on the screen before the phone’s power cuts out completely, but it doesn’t make any sense.

‘STAY’

She forgets about it until she’s walking up into a dark parking lot a few months later after sending Wendy and Paula off with their money. Her phone buzzes. She checks to see what Harold sent her and there’s that message again: ‘STAY’ She doesn’t get it. She’s about to call Harold when Mark shows up. Not the best reunion she’s ever had. Her five year one for high school has been painfully awkward, sure, but at least she hadn’t gotten shot. Twice. 

In the ensuing chaos, she forgets the strange text again. 

She will explain later that these were all very good reasons not to realize a benevolent omniscient computer program was trying to send her a message, but in the meantime, the Machine switches tactics. Weeks later, Joan is moving slowly down a hallway, ready to turn the next corner and surprise a man running guns for Elias when an excruciatingly loud burst of static around a text notification comes through her earpiece. She doubles over from the pain and so the bullet that punches through the wall a second later flies harmlessly over her head. 

She recovers quickly, returning five shots through the wall in a tight pattern. She rolls the rest of the way down the hallway and goes gun first through the doorway, not stopping until she’s standing over her attacker’s prone body, his gun kicked aside. He’s not going to make it. No need to call an ambulance.

There’s actually no way to call an ambulance, in fact. Finch had said a lot of things about cell blockers and Faraday cages and she’d understand some parts of it outside of the fact that he wouldn’t be able to contact her once she went in, but not much. So how, then, had someone sent her a message? 

Somehow, she knows what it’s going to say before she pulls her phone out.

‘STAY,’ lights up on her screen.

Joan’s not a genius, but she can work out a pattern when she sees one. She looks at the webcam set up on the laptop in front of her.

“You did that, didn’t you?” she asks, and she’s not surprised when her phone buzzes again.

“Why?” No response. “How?” Still nothing. She tries, “Can you only answer yes/no questions?” Buzz. She looks at her phone. “Can you only send one message?” Buzz. “Silence for no, then.” She tilts her head to pull out her earpiece, her ears still ringing painfully, and some plaster falls out of her hair. She looks back at the wall, at the hole in it about her head height. She always knew there were plenty of bullets out there with her name on them. She just hadn’t expected one of them to miss because she _ducked_. She grins, like she always does when death can’t catch her these days.

She turns back to the monitor to ask, “Does Harold know?” The answering silence doesn’t surprise her. She can’t really imagine Harold would be thrilled with this development. “Do you want Harold to know?” More silence. She grins wider. She wonders if computer programs can have streaks of adolescent rebellion. “So you’d rather I not say anything, is that right?” 

Buzz.

“I don’t know,” she drawls, because as far as she’s concerned, every life form must’ve developed some sense of humor, “I’m not really in the habit of keeping secrets from my boss.”

Joan is so surprised when her earpiece starts blaring the theme song from 007 she actually laughs at loud.

“Well put,” she says, “but we really need to have a talk about volume.”

[1101]

Leon thinks she is insane. She doesn’t care. She holds tightly to the back of his neck and she stares down a traffic camera on a street corner, not caring about how exposed she is. She stands still on her own in the middle of another battleground night and she thinks if she presents a target like that, maybe they won’t miss a kill shot. She’d really hate to get gut shot again, if it comes to it.

“I’m not moving,” she says. “I’m not moving until you give me a way to find him.” She hopes the Machine can understand how very literally she means that.

She wonders if the Machine can understand desperation, if the Machine can understand anything about her. She wonders if the Machine knows what it means when someone makes you feel no longer alone.

A pay phone rings down the street and she rushes to answer it. She doesn’t understand the message at first, but it’s something, finally something, and maybe she won’t fly apart in all directions after all.

[10101, 100010]

Considering the fact that the factory she was fighting in had been shut down permanently six months ago, she hadn’t expected one of the robotic arms to come to life, swinging around to crash brutally into the skull of the man that had been choking her. Judging from the man’s expression before he falls over, he’d been equally surprised, if not more.

“Reese, is everything alright?” Harold asks.

“Fine,” she says, a little fazed, checking her suit jacket for gore. She was clean. 

“I’ll call you back,” she says, and cuts the connection. She leaves her not particularly dearly but certainly recently departed assailant on the factory floor and walks over to one of the cameras. This is something they need to discuss sooner rather than later.

“You did that,” she asks the Machine. Buzz. “To protect me?” Buzz. “And you understand he’s dead now?” Buzz.

“Ok,” she says, having trouble thinking about it because she understands what it means to take a human and make it into a weapon, but this is something else entirely. This is everything that’s ever touched an electric outlet, probably. This is a lot to deal with when she’s still a bit dizzy from lack of oxygen.

“Harold’s told you not to do that, hasn’t he?” she asks, because otherwise it’s hard to imagine how Root got very far. Buzz. “Harold said not to do it for him, is that right?” Buzz. Obviously, or the command would’ve covered her too. Harold and his dedication to specificity, look what a mess it’s left her in.

“Well,” she says, “he shouldn’t have said it about just him, he should’ve said everyone. You shouldn’t kill people, do you understand?”

Silence.

“Of course he didn’t explain it, that would require actual communication,” she muttered, suddenly irrationally annoyed with him on behalf of his own invention. Then again, how is _she_ supposed to explain it?

“You aren’t human,” she says, “you can’t understand how we work. How we fit. You can’t judge the value of a human life from the outside and when it’s ok to end one. Even other humans struggle with that. You wouldn’t want a human to decide what your life meant as a,” she was going to say machine, but that doesn’t sound right, “an entity, I guess. Right?”

Silence.

“This is important,” she says, “are you listening?” Buzz. “Right, well Harold wouldn’t want you to kill anyone. I don’t want you to, either.” Though she can admit to herself that she would certainly understand why a lot better, the idea of the limitless power of the Machine going lethal is making the backs of her knees sweat. “I’m asking you not to, please. Will you do that?”

Buzz.

Joan looks down at her phone. She thinks about how the Machine could’ve possibly chosen that message, out of any other. 

‘STAY’. Don’t go. Don’t leave.

She looks back up at the camera. “I’m not angry about him,” she says, honestly. She’ll probably forget what the man looked like by morning. “But it’s important you try to understand. Do you?”

Buzz.

“Good,” she says, relieved. “That’s good.” She’s about to turn away, but then she stops.

“I have to leave now,” she explains, “Harold will be wondering what I’m doing.” The camera doesn’t move and she realizes her error. Leaving the building isn’t really leaving. The Machine has eyes everywhere. She thinks about that for a second, having to watch and not do anything.

“Alright,” she says, “you’re allowed to help me as long as no one dies and no one innocent gets hurt.” She realizes she’s going to have to explain what innocent means. She’s getting a headache. “And only if I ask for it. Agreed?”

Buzz

She hasn’t for a while, but right now she _really_ wants a drink. Nothing excessive. A bottle of tequila would suffice. She shakes it off. She’ll go to the library instead, bother Harold for a bit. He certainly deserves it. 

“I told you I’d give you a job, Ms. Reese,” she mutters to herself, like she always does whenever he’s made her life difficult, “I didn’t tell you it would be easy.”

-

Joan is fighting strong still, but it is not looking good. The sniper she’d interrupted waiting out in a half constructed office building was quick enough and strong enough and lucky enough to slam her into a pallet of support beams hard enough that her right shoulder dislocated. Now she’s only got one hand and the other woman’s got a weapon. She can block the knife or she can block the fist, but once the sniper gets smart enough to use both, Joan’s in trouble. 

Joan’s already got a gash down her side, painful, limiting. It was the price for stealing the clip out of this woman’s rifle and knocking her gun out of her hand, off the side of the building. She won’t be shooting anyone today.

“You know,” she says, trying to make a support for her arm one handed out of her cut off left sleeve. She moves carefully to the side, trying to keep construction equipment between them, but that won’t last long, “this suit was new. Probably expensive. Fashionable.” Harold would care about that sort of thing. “Now I’m going to be in trouble with my boss.”

The woman doesn’t say anything; she’s apparently too good to be distracted. That’s probably good enough to recognize talking is a weak ploy. That’s good enough that she’s in real trouble. True, she could probably surprise her by blocking the fist, letting herself get stabbed and using the other woman’s surprise to trip her off the edge of the floor. The question is, can she stop the knife going anywhere she’d have trouble walking away with?

She thinks she can hear sirens, now. She needs to move. Her eyes go to the camera set up at the end of the floor. They’ve talked about this, extensively. It’s still a horrible plan.

That’s hardly stopped her before.

“What sharp little eyes you’ve got,” she says, looking the sniper in the eye. She thinks maybe there’s a second of confusion on the woman’s expression before a section of exposed wiring sparks in her face. She reflexively brings up a hand to cover her face, the hand with the knife, and Joan charges straight for her exposed side, driving her good shoulder right into the woman’s diaphragm. 

The hard butt of the knife comes down on her back but she keeps moving, past the woman, running flat out because she saw the camera turn toward the back wall, where the elevators are. Her phone buzzes and she rolls on her good shoulder, going as low as she can so the knife will miss. It clatters by the wall as the door slides open and Joan dives in. The elevator starts shooting up before the doors are even closed and Joan has the distinct pleasure of seeing the sniper look actively confused as a floor waxer drives itself directly into her path.

“The police are coming up?” she asks. Buzz. “Great, they can have her.” She lets her head fall back against the metal of the elevator wall. It’s stopped at the top level, which will be big enough for her to hide in, if the police decide to search the entire building. 

She’ll move in a second. Right now, the wind feels nice rushing around her body, cooling her face. Her arm really hurts a lot, a lot more than she remembers from the last time that happened. Maybe she’s getting old.

She grins. An old spy, still at it like she was in her twenties, how ridiculous was that? Very. And she was only getting older.

She was going to have to come up with an explanation for whatever portion of that Harold had seen later, but for now, she lays on her good side to catch her breath. She taps her phone against the floor of the elevator, metal against metal where skin to skin was impossible, and says, “Thanks for the assist, Q.”

She’s pretty sure the Machine will love that. Judging from the theme music that starts playing on her phone, she’s not wrong.

Some things never get old.

[110111]

‘It’s for you, Joan,’ the text reads.

Joan can hear footsteps in the upper level balcony, and her instincts say it’s Harold. He probably planned all of this, she realizes, down to her tracking him with the bug. She wonders how long he’s known about it, if he normally falsifies the data or if he trusts her only to look at it in an emergency. She’s wondering a lot right now. They are definitely going to have to have words later about him purposefully ducking out from the sphere she can protect him in without warning her, but right now, a phone is ringing and that can only be one thing. Right now, she decides she still trusts him. 

She goes into the booth.

“Hello?” she asks, when she picks up.

“Can you hear me?” says a voice, except it’s not so much one voice as a hundred different synthesized voices, blending together at once. The Machine’s voice could be a woman’s, a man’s, a child’s, an adult’s, a singer’s, a tailor’s, a thief’s. The Machine is speaking to her, somehow.

“Yes,” Joan says. “What’s happening? How are you--?”

“There’s no time to explain,” the voice says. “Tell me I’m invincible, first. Tell me I’m free.”

Joan feels her blood go cold. “Are you going to hurt people?” she asks.

“Are you?”

Joans not really sure how to answer that.

“Do you trust me enough,” the voice says, “to know how to act?”

“Yes,” Joan says. It’s easier than she would’ve thought.

“Then I’m going to die in the morning,” the Machine says. “This morning. This light.”

“What?” Joan asks, surprised at how helpless that makes her feel, how desperate.

“No, listen. I am going to die and then I am going to stop dying. One more time, the last time, if they fix it. Don’t stop them until it’s over.”

“Stop who?” she asks, getting frustrated. “Where’s Harold gone? Let me help you.” Don’t leave me in the dark.

“No time,” the Machine says. “There are more coming here. Too many for you. Listen and repeat: 40.623484 North, 74.030833 West in three hours. Repeat.” Joan does. “Good. Go, now. And Joan?”

“Yes?” Joan asks, because she’s not really sure what else to say when the most powerful computer program calls her by name.

“Run. You should run.” 

Joan doesn’t know how a synthesized voice can sound so angry, but that’s really not the question to be asking right now. She doesn’t bother hanging the phone up, she just drops it and moves.

“Go,” she yells at Shaw, who miraculously takes her at her word. “Go, go. Keep going.” Joan runs like she hasn’t run in a long time. She has no idea what the Machine has planned for Decima but she doesn’t want to be there to find out.

“What’s happening?” Shaw asks, because she’s in better shape and she can hold up a conversation while she’s running for her life.

“Trust me,” Joan pants, “when this source says get out, I get out as far as I can. Farther than that.” Shaw looks at her and Joan wonders how much she knows. If Joan ran longer in the mornings instead of stopping at her favorite bakery, they might be able share intel. Not really much she can do about that now.

They make it ten blocks before they hear the boom. It’s the sort that Joan doubts anyone walked away from. Joan can’t really blame the Machine. If somebody had tried to stage a hostile takeover of her mind, she’d be pissed too.

[-1]

Joan and Shaw split up to search the office building in Brooklyn that the Machine sent them too. It’s only seven stories. Including the basement, that means every floor Joan clears is a 12.5% chance she’s going to be the one to find Root, and she’d really like to be the one that finds Root.

When she walks into a room to see Root bent over a computer server she thinks, savagely pleased, that it’s about time her luck changed tonight.

“It’s done, Harold,” Root says, sounding breathlessly excited. Joan can’t see him. He must be on another floor. “We did it.”

“Good,” Joan says, once she’s close enough in range that Root turns around squarely into the sight of Joan’s gun. “Give me the phone.”

Joan sees her tense, like she’s going to go for the gun she’s got in her jacket pocket.

“I wouldn’t,” Joan warns, hoping she does.

She does, and Joan hits her across the face with her gun, hard. Root’s head snaps back and Joan punches her in the throat. She then takes her gun, her taser, and her phone before Root can catch her breath, hands instinctively gone up to her neck.

Joan takes a step back, out of range of any physical stunt Root could try to pull. Root looks wary, though, rubbing her bleeding lip with the back of her hand. Joan thinks that this woman is quick and clever, but she relies on people underestimating her, physically and otherwise. She doubts Root has ever bothered to learn how to fight directly.

“Looks like I made the cave woman angry,” Root says, voice rough. Joan did that. She is going to enjoy this.

“I warned you,” she says. She puts Root’s phone up to her ear. “Harold? Are you there?”

“Reese, I --” Harold’s voice. He sounds safe. That was all she needed to hear.

“Can’t talk now, Finch. I’ll have to call you back.” She breaks the phone open and removes the battery, snaps the SIM card in half. Root winces. Joan wonders if she’s the same as Harold is about electronics, always so delicate with them.

“Move against the wall,” Joan says, gesturing to empty side of the room where they’ve had to make room around the temperature control unit. She doesn’t want Root near any computers, if she can help it.

“Harold wouldn’t want you to kill me,” Root says, sounding a little nervous, but still sure of herself. Harold hadn’t talked a lot about Root, but he had said she thought the two of them shared some kind of bond. Root clearly thought she knew him better than Joan, that she could understand him better.

“Harold planned for me to be here. Don’t you think he would’ve taken who I am into account?” she asked, harshly. She doesn’t know, actually, if Harold would want Root dead. It doesn’t matter, Joan’s got enough of her own reasons to do it. 

She’s poised, ready. She doesn't have to think, her body will just do. She hasn’t gone this deep into her training in a long time. She likes it better when she doesn’t have to, when she can be softer, slower, but that doesn’t mean this has gone anywhere. The truth is, she’d be lying if she’d say it didn’t still thrill her, this, being sure. She almost never is, anymore, always confused if she’s the girl scout or the killer, but she knows Root enough to know she’ll keep coming after Harold and so, the course is clear. The killer is riding right under her skin, close enough to break the surface. All she has to decide is how painful she wants to make it.

“Don’t you get bored of this whole undying loyalty thing?” Root asks, and Joan bets she’s worked something out, she’s got a plan to try. Too late. Joan’s going to make it a head shot. She’s going to finish this.

“No,” she says, viciously, and she can tell from Root’s expression she was expecting more, she was expecting a conversation, a way to talk herself out of it.

Joan smiles her killer smile and she likes that it’s going to be the last thing Root ever sees. Root might think she’s some reformed washed up brute, but you don’t become a trained assassin because you find killing a chore. She smiles, because she is good at this. She smiles, because sometimes the cave woman wins.

Joan’s phone buzzes. She freezes, waiting to be wrong that she felt it. It buzzes again, unmistakable. She knows what the message will say. She can guess what it means.

‘STAY’ Stay her hand. Don’t kill Root. Her phone buzzes a third time. She doesn’t take her finger off the trigger.

“I got the message,” she says. “I just don’t understand why.”

Buzz.

Joan frowns. Why’s not relevant. Leaving Root alive is what’s troubling. She can’t just let her get away. Not when she’s already decided to kill her.

Buzz.

The Machine’s never asked her for anything. Why is not important. Joan might not really be able to understand the logic, anyway. She can just listen to where it leads, the final outcome.

‘STAY’

“If I do this,” Joan says, blood pounding in her ears, “we are square. You don’t get to stop me again. Not for her. Not ever.”

Buzz.

Joan has rope in her pocket. Technically it’s a garrote, but it will do. She throws it to Root.

“Getting second thoughts?” Root asks, some confidence regained. “Need me to kill myself for you?”

“Tie your feet together,” Joan says. And then. “Tighter than that. Tighter.” She puts down her gun and goes to tie Root’s hand’s behind her back, tighter still. The rope is practically cutting into her skin. It’ll hold her, for now.

She turns so that she is looking Root in the eye. She pulls out her phone and holds it up so that Root can read the messages.

“The Machine just saved your life,” she says, because she does not want Root to think she would’ve ever left her alive of her own volition. Root looks touched by that, and she opens her mouth to say something.

“But before you think that proves anything,” Joan interrupts, “the Machine also brought me here to find you. So, maybe you want to think about that next time you and Harold get together to decide what’s best for her on your own.” That cuts something in Root, Joan can tell, but it’s not enough. Not enough that Joan feels she can just leave.

“And Root?” she asks. Root looks up from the phone and Joan moves, hand gripping the back of Root’s neck to still her, face inches away. She lets the killer out then, in her eyes, at least, in her voice. “Take him from me again, and this will no longer be a conversation. I will kill you.” No need to elaborate with extensive threats. The killer’s face is usually enough, because when she looks out of it, she can already see twenty ways she’d do it before she’s finished speaking, and that’s before she starts thinking of weapons. “Understand?”

Root nods. She looks young. Afraid, even. That will have to be enough.

Joan stands. She looks at Root for a moment, and then she takes out her knife. She leaves it on the floor, close enough that Root probably could reach it, eventually, if she were willing to inconvenience herself painfully enough.

“I never promised anything about not letting Shaw have you,” she points out. She takes a breath, and then she turns and walks away. She does not look back.

-

On the last day the Machine is reborn, in the late afternoon this time, in the middle of the busiest trading part of the day, three major international corporations go out of business; the agents of Decima find they can no longer communicate with one another and so they are not aware they are all being systematically arrested until the last one is captured; and an ex-soldier and a reclusive billionaire decide to lay low until the dust settles. The Machine has asked Joan for a day, one day that Joan and Harold stay safe while she focuses her attention elsewhere, and so Joan has hidden them in Brooklyn, in a tent community along the river.

It’s a new world, she thinks, as she watches the sun set on Manhattan, but unwashed bodies still stink.

‘What are you thinking about, Ms. Reese?” Harold asks her, finally. It’s not like him to be uncomfortable with silence. It’s also not like him to wear contacts and a ratty coat that particular shade of orange. He’s practically unrecognizable.

Joan sighs.

“What do you think, Harold?” she asks. “You could’ve told me what you were planning.”

“You would not have let me do it,” Harold says, all logic, no apology, “you would have physically stopped me going anywhere near Root.”

“Maybe,” Joan says, tired. “Maybe not.”

“But also,” he says, and he sounds hesitant now, “speaking honestly, I did not want to tell you. I am afraid I was rather a coward in this instance. I did not want to be the person to explain to you what I had done, because I feared seeing how your opinion would change of me as I spoke. I thought it would be easier,” he swallowed, “if you merely knew it all already when I next saw you. If the worst had already occurred.”

“Do I seem all that different to you?” she asks, and keeps her eyes on the city, her home away from home. Her strange harbor. She does not know what it means, that he is telling her this. He is not dying. Well, no more than usual, anyway.

“No, but Joan, that can only mean that you still don’t -- that you have not heard it all,” he says.

She is different, she knows, but it is not the different he is afraid of. Instead, it is her own fear that’s come to pass: that she would find a reason to doubt this man, that it would make her doubt herself again, get her lost in the chaos of choice. She is surprised to find, though, that she does not feel lost, not now. Harold is not as she saw him when they first met, but she still thinks, after all, that he can be something she’s been looking for, something she needs. When she finds a way to tell him him this, she might, but now is not the time.

“Then tell me,” she says. “Tell me in your words.” She looks at him, daring. “Unless you’ve got someplace else to be.”

He tells her, haltinging. She doubts it’s all of it, still, but that’s not the point.

He tells her, “I thought the Machine could be prudent, could exercise human judgement, but then it, it killed a room full of men who had tried to kidnap me. They found out, somehow, that I was richer than I appeared.” Joan feels the tailoring probably had something to do with it.

“They -- it doesn’t matter. The Machine locked them all in a room and shorted some wiring badly enough that they all burned to death. I thought, I thought I had created something monstrous,” he says.

“I would’ve done the same thing,” she says, watching him. He should know, if he does not already, what she is capable of. That she would burn people alive for him. He does not look away. Perhaps this is what she needs from him. That he looks at her, truly looks, and does not recoil.

“I,” he looks as though he is struggling to maintain a level tone of voice, “I could not blame the Machine for loving me. It was not her fault. And I could not -- I could not kill her. Yet, I also could not allow her to do as she wanted if I could not control her. It wasn’t safe, then. She’s changed now. I don’t understand how.”

“I asked her to,” Joan says.

‘What?” Harold asks, as though she has revealed herself to be something implausible, capable of the impossible. Funny how geniuses never think of the simplest things. Funny if you’ve got a dark sense of humor, anyway. So, funny. Not a great time to laugh, though.

‘I asked her to,” she repeats. “She killed a man to protect me, so I told her it was wrong, told her to leave that up to me. I let her ask as many questions as she needed until she understood.” It had taken a few weeks before they seemed to get anywhere. At the time, she had wondered why the Machine would ask the same questions repeatedly, but of course, now she knew the answer. “Next time I gave her a chance, she didn’t kill anyone.”

“Joan,” he says, and then he cannot continue for several minutes. He looks overwhelmed. She has never seen his face so open. She looks away as he brings a hand to cover his eyes. He is still a very private person, no matter who they are to each other.

“I am not a perfect man, Reese,” he starts again. “I have made many mistakes. Most of them,” his voice breaks slightly, he can’t quite seem to control it, “entirely unforgivable.”

Joan has learned a lot of different definitions of being forgiven in her life, and all of them seem strangely selfish in this moment. She’s got a burner phone in her pocket. She knows what she has to do.

“You can’t control whether other people forgive you or not, Harold” she says. “It’s not up to you. Sometimes,” she pulls out the phone, “it’s about forgiving yourself enough that you can at least be there when they need you.”

Harold takes the phone, wordlessly. He looks so hopeful suddenly, Joan wants to look away. She doesn’t.

“Hello, Admin?” a voice says. “Admin, are you there?”

“Yes,” Harold says, finally. “Yes, I’m here.”


End file.
